The present invention relates to a device and a method for determining the quality of surfaces, respectively the visual properties of surfaces.
The present invention relates in particular to a device and a method for the determining of the color and the color properties of surfaces.
The quality, respectively the visual properties of a surface, is to be generally understood here as being those physical properties of a surface which determine the appearance of a surface for a human observer.
Besides for color, respectively impression of color, these properties also include gloss, haze, distinctness of image (DOI), color brightness as well as surface texture and orange peel, etc.
The color of a surface is an especially important criterion for the assessing of surface quality, because the color, respectively impression of color, is a decisive feature for the overall impression of a product in the case of numerous consumer and technical products.
In many fields during the manufacturing of a product, it is crucial to ensure that the color of the product being manufactured does not change during the course of production. Such changes in product color can result from environmental conditions changing during the course of production (temperature, moisture, surface nature, etc.). In order to avoid such changes in color, manufacturing equipment must be monitored continuously or at regular intervals and products must be measured individually with respect to the nature of their surface.
For this reason, surface measuring and color measuring devices have become known in the prior art which can determine the visual properties of product surfaces. Many known measuring devices are however of large-scale size and represent great expenditure and expense in their acquiring and operating. Other known measuring devices are portable, yet provide only insufficient precision or accuracy.
It is therefore the task of the present invention to provide a device and a method of the type as indicated above to enable a reproducible and quantified evaluation of the quality of surfaces.
A further aspect of said task is to provide a device which is small and simple in its construction so that a user can effortlessly take it with him and can use it for determining the quality of a surface without the need to utilize any other auxiliary contrivances.
This task is solved in accordance with the present inventive device as defined in claim 1.
The inventive method comprises the subject matter of claim 35. Preferred embodiments of the invention constitute the subject matter of the subclaims.